Indian tech companies faced highest H-1b visa denial

Indian firms are the ones that received least number of H-1B Visas from the United States Citizenship and Immigration (USCIS) in the third quarter of fiscal 2020, says the data compiled by National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP).

Except for Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) with a denial rate of 15 percent, all other Indian services companies had the highest average denial rate of 21 percent, The Economic Times reported.

Companies like Tech Mahindra, L&T, Infosys, Cognizant registered denial rates of 30%, 26%, 58% and 48% respectively while TCS reported only 15% denial rate. However, US tech companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Facebook have suffered much lower visa denials at 7%, 1%, 3% and 1% respectively, the report said.

“The denial rate for new H-1B petitions for initial employment rose from 6% in FY2015 to 21% through the third quarter of FY 2020,” the business daily quoted Stuart Anderson of the NFAP as saying. “This is in line with the 21% denial rate for H-1B petitions for initial employment in FY2019 and the 24% denial rate in FY2018.”

“Similar to cases for initial employment, among the most recent top 25 employers with the most approved H-1B petitions for continuing employment in FY2019, 10 companies that provide information technology or other services to businesses had denial rates of 11% or higher for H-1B petitions for continuing employment in the first quarter of FY 2020,” the report quoted Anderson as saying.

Earlier last June, the USCIS had withdrawn two memos that were used to deny a large number of the visa applications by services companies. According to Anderson, the data for the subsequent quarters will show whether this reflect on H-1B denials. However, about 85,000 new H-1B visas have been issued annually against 275,000 applications. This shows the demand for H-1B visas are rising irrespective of the denial rate.

The agency did not provide the data for the second and third quarters of FY2020.